If you can believe it, it’s 20 years since Ireland hosted the Special Olympics. 20 years since the Dublin’s Spire was completed. And 20 years since Google Ireland was born.
In 2003, Google opened their first office in Ireland with just employees, and the company has decided to whip out the time machine to celebrate the milestone.
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Amongst other nuggets, Google Ireland’s most weather-obsessed towns. As well as confirming our nationwide obsessions with atmospheric conditions.
Google Ireland Names
With such a changeable climate in Ireland, it’s no surprise that heatwaves and deluges are amongst Ireland’s most searched topics. However, three Irish towns are a little more weather-obsessed than the rest. Carrick-on-Shannon in Co Leitrim is the most weather-obsessed town, followed by Tramore and New Ross.
And Google Ireland also shared how named storms opened up a whole new can of searches. In 2015, Met Eireann and the UK’s Met Office began naming storms in the region with upcoming storms titled by the public.
In 2015 Ireland left nameless storms behind as launched the “Name Our Storms” campaign to much joy as the nation submitted names to be considered for storms for the upcoming year, some wackier than others.
2017’s Storm Ophelia, the worst storm Ireland had seen in 50 years, is the most searched weather event since. Storm Lorenzo and Storm Callum are second and third respectively
The Past is a Foreign Country… Sometimes
Five years ago, Ireland Googled the weather and in particular the term ‘heatwave’. Plus ça change… Heatwave trended hard in 2018 with the following top five related searches
- How long will the heatwave last?
- When will the heatwave end?
- Heatwave memes
- Met Eireann heatwave
- Dublin heatwave
In 2011, the country was hit by mass flooding with the ‘flood’, ‘floods’ and ‘flooding’ trending at the time. The fact that many towns across Ireland were waist deep in water led to individual towns and cities trending.
- Dublin floods
- Dundrum flooding
- Meath flooding
- Monaghan floods
- Galway City flood
Google Hows and Whats
Google Ireland also shared the most-searched ‘How To’ and ‘What is’ questions since 2003. A regular trendtopper, ‘How to make pancakes’ shows we loves pancakes but perhaps not enough to make them regularly.
Other trending questions serve as a time capsule. ‘How to make loom bands’ trended in 2014. While in 2015 people in Ireland Googled ‘How to use new Snapchat’ en masse. Social and political hot topics also saw their fair share of searches. In 2008, Irish people asked Google Search ‘What is the Lisbon Treaty’. In 2018, the burning question was ‘What is blasphemy’. Donald Trump’s impeachment also trended on Google Search in Ireland.
Less serious trends saw Irish people learn how to twerk and get on board with Despacito.
Sport Search
If Irish people like one other topic more than the weather, it’s sport. Google Search has seen some huge trends emerging around sporting events. In 2012, Ireland searched for the Olympics more than any other year with twice as many searches as for 2016 or 2021.
Katie Taylor was the top-searched person in relation to the Olympics in Ireland for 2012 with ‘When is Katie Taylor fighting in the Olympics’ driving searches to that all-time high and was the top trending question. Annalise Murphy was the top-searched Irish Olympian during the 2016 games.
Rugby was also a trending topic for Google Search in Ireland. In 2009 ‘grand slam’ was during Ireland’s historic Six Nations run. Ireland vs. England was the top-searched match-up of the 2009 Six Nations tournament in Ireland. The term ‘What’s a grand slam in rugby’ jumped +700% during the same tournament.
